2 9 2

Lit[erature] Bureau and through 
the Presidium of 
the VTsIK)
to distribute
all 
in 3 copies] per district with the signatures of all delegates from that 
district, who undertake (under criminal liability) 
to submit 
all 3 copies] to the local library within 1—1½ months¹.
(Sometimes 2, sometimes 4 copies] per district).
Lenin.

¹ This proposal by Lenin was reflected in the following resolution of the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets, introduced by the Congress Presidium: "Taking into account the shortage of literature in the localities, particularly specialized literature, the Presidium of the Congress of Soviets proposes that all delegates, in particular, representatives of the districts, submit all literature distributed at the Congress to local libraries no later than 6 weeks after the Congress concludes" (see Stenographic Report of the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets, p. 52, 1921 edition).

MEMORANDUM OF L. A. FOTIEVA¹.
9064
To Fotieva or the duty secretary.
25/XII [1921]

I request that [this] be retyped in 7 copies] and sent 
1) to Molotov
2—6) to all members of the Lit[erature] Bureau
7) to Kalinin
as a draft resolution of the 9th Congress.
Ask Molotov also to request the appropriate People's Commissars.

Lenin.

¹ The memorandum was written by Lenin on the draft resolution "Directive on Issues of Economic Work, adopted by the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets on December 28, 1921" (text of the resolution see Works, vol. XXVII, p. 142).

MATERIALS FROM THE CONFERENCE OF NON-PARTY DELEGATES 
OF THE IX CONGRESS OF SOVIETS, DECEMBER 26, 1921¹.

RECORD OF DISCUSSION ON THE REPORT OF THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR OF LABOR ON THE TRANSPORT TAX.

1) They are not taking lean cows into the tax (Smolensk Province).
2) labor-transport obligation (Kostroma Province)
(now things are better).

3) bureaucratic red tape; we must get rid of it
(Tver Province)
4) the forest committees are burdensome, they torment people, do not provide what is supposed to be provided. They deceive.
From the working district they are demanding work in vain, work that cannot be done except at a different time.
Do not give the foresters full freedom.
(Gomel Province)
5) (Tver Province). Forest work. (Novotorzhsk District).
They selected a 3-week [period] during the mud season. 
100 horses died. 
Who will compensate? —— Too many 2- and 3-week [periods] are being announced.
Non-existent groves were listed on paper 
(deception by the forest committees). [The guilty] are sitting in Butyrka.
(Through the Tver provincial executive committee I sent him a telegram: 
do not interfere in the affairs of the forest committees).
(Nesterov* makes a report).
6) Kursk Province (Korochan District). (Get rid of collective responsibility. Each person answers for himself).
Forest committees are harmful. It would be better to attach them to cooperatives, etc. The tax is the right path.
7) Simbirsk Province.
Worker.
The unemployed have nothing to pay the tax with.
IX ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF SOVIETS 
2 9 3
The bourgeoisie are not hard to destroy and it is good to do so.
But we have bondage: labor has turned into bondage.
The workshops were not paid (900 million) — the workers scattered. (There are also provocateurs in the localities, opponents of Soviet power).
On the Volga the rafts were freezing: a mercenary aim, theft.
They declare [someone] a deserter when he flees, wet, hungry, having received neither clothes nor pay.
They force work on holidays, but do not issue salt 
"because of the holiday"!!
so that they don't torment us in vain.
"labor [should] be free," not bondage. 
A labor exchange, not bondage.
8) Simbirsk Province. 
Syzran

("They complain, nothing gets done"),
The Labor Committee doesn't please [us]. We need a 
labor tax.
Smolensk Province. (Dorogobuzhsk District)
Forest committees do great harm. They take rations but don't work. 
The old bourgeoisie. But I am for the tax, the labor tax.
Samara Province. Stabropolsky District.
Forest committees torment people in vain with needless work. Hunger. They are consuming people.

Moscow Province. Dmitrovsky District
Labor obligation falls on the poorest.
The rich sell a horse in autumn (so as not to pay the labor tax), buy it back in spring.
Abolish labor obligation, so that there is voluntary work.
Voronezh Province.
Gusev* (Tver Province)
It would be necessary to pay for labor...
It would be necessary to transfer labor to a paid basis.
Moscow Province and District.
They are requisitioning in vain; they are breaking wheels.
They force work at the wrong time.

SPEECHES BY LENIN*.

I.
Comrades! Having decided to continue our conversation — I think we have no doubts about this — I want only to say that it is now around half past eight, we can stay here until half past nine and even later if needed. We must select the question that interests us most. If a comrade here has pointed out that it is the land question, then I must say: let us allocate time to those questions which have the greatest significance for you. My task here, as I understand it, is more to listen and take notes. What I wanted to say, I said to you at the Congress. I am trying to note down from which province, from which district, what people are complaining about most. I think that time should be allocated in such a way that, after the question of labor-transport obligation is concluded, we can determine which other questions seem most essential, so that we can also manage to hear about them from various provinces. My task here is to take notes as thoroughly as possible to know what has been said here by the non-party delegates. To answer individual questions that are being asked here will be very difficult for me, because without reference materials I cannot give an answer right now, immediately. That is why I propose to select those questions which are considered most important, and about them [let speakers] express themselves from the localities, just as they did about the labor-transport tax, and I will record every statement that is made from the localities.

II.
Comrades, it is very difficult for me to say a couple of words on this question, because all the questions that were raised here I am recording, and recording from which province which suggestions were made, but without precise reference materials from the appropriate institution, I cannot answer here right now the questions that were asked here. The comrade who just spoke from the People's Commissariat of Labor had it easy to answer because he has before him the published law and an explanation of how, through the introduction of this law, relief will be achieved. On individual questions that have been asked here, without reference materials from the appropriate People's Commissariat, I cannot give any definite answer.

Here I have also received a number of notes. One note is from a Ukrainian comrade from Kiev, who asks: why have I never been in Ukraine? To go to Ukraine is far. Such a trip is difficult to undertake.

One comrade asks who will pay for the killed horses from the labor-transport [work]. I have recorded this question. A comrade has already given a general answer to it.

Then two notes were submitted on the question concerning the food tax and regarding the impossibility for poor peasants to buy manufactured goods. Of course, it is clear that now the peasantry in all provinces is bearing a great many such difficulties. Without reference materials from the appropriate institution, I cannot answer such a question right now.

Will we be able to help and to what extent help? I repeat that I cannot answer right now. It seems to me that one of the most important things that was expressed here on the question of the labor-transport tax — and this is judging from the notes I have quickly reviewed (and I was recording briefly what was said by each of those comrades who spoke here) — the main thing that emerges, it seems to me, is the abuses and irregularities of the forest committees. Most of all there were indications that the work assigned by the forest committees is burdensome, that people are being tormented, that there are extraordinarily many irregularities in the distribution and assignment of workers, especially at a time when they are directly harmful in peasant farms. All these indications I have recorded, and I have recorded that when there was the last three-week [period], all comrades were being sent from the center to the localities. I asked [them] to collect precise materials regarding all the irregularities connected with fuel work, and regarding abuses, and a whole series of reports. I have already begun receiving letters about this, but in recent times, owing to illness, which forced me to limit myself at the Congress to only a general report, I must say that I myself was unable to go through these answers. This will be entrusted to another comrade who is temporarily replacing me, but all these data collected during the last three-week [period] we will certainly gather. The indications of irregularities and abuses by the forest committees I consider on the whole undoubtedly correct. One of the principal reasons why it was decided to introduce the labor-transport tax, which the comrade from the People's Commissariat of Labor was reporting on, consists in the fact that without a proper determination of the volume of labor (an attempt is being made: in the law it is determined through six-day work), without such proper determination in the law, abuses by provincial and forest committees are inevitable, and the struggle against them is very difficult. And when in the law it is precisely announced, as it is now announced, how many days of labor are required, a fixed norm will be known, which determines how much and what quantity of work during these days needs to be carried out, the struggle against abuses will be much easier. Of course in provinces and districts with provincial and forest committees, especially when, as one of the comrades pointed out, many old officials, old landowners, old forest contractors have crept into these institutions, of course, the struggle with them is a difficult thing. It is necessary that in the localities they watch this more strictly, and we need there to be more comrades from the non-party peasants in the TsIK, to whom, in the case if a complaint reaches [the level of] appointment, one could turn, and they themselves, here at the TsIK session, would raise this question and demand an investigation of the irregularities. These measures in any case will be carried out at the present Congress. The number of members of the TsIK from non-party peasants, as all the comrades participating in the Congress inform me, will undoubtedly be increased. Through this means, it will be easier to follow up on the ability to struggle more successfully against abuses of the forest committees, the more non-party peasants, members of the TsIK, there are. I repeat that I am recording all the indications that are being made here and will write to each of the corresponding People's Commissariats or the Council of People's Commissars about them, so that measures can be taken. But to give an answer regarding each particular question, without reference materials from the corresponding People's Commissariat, I certainly cannot do right now.

RECORD OF DISCUSSION ON THE LAND QUESTION*.

Enitsey Province. Partial remark. Unimportant. **

Tver Province.
The food tax is difficult, incorrectly calculated.

Tambov Province.
Cooperatives must be registered in the district land committees. This is not indicated.

Tula Province.
The forests have been cut down.
It would be necessary to plant forests.

Yekaterinburg Province. Krasnourinsk District.
20—45 desyatinas for sovkhozes (pedigree cattle). The rest should be given to landless former Red Army men.
Eliminate interspersed holdings.
Place local people in the sovkhozes.

Saratov Province. Worker—on the transfer of land.

Penza Province. On land improvement works.

Kursk Province. Petruskin: [something] omitted about hay meadows.
(from the decisions of the All-Russian Land Congress).
(
Rural Soviet — administrative organ
for the SNO
Rural Committee — economic organ
Forests (not state, not of all-state importance) transfer to the peasantry. They will preserve them better.

Vyatka Province. Urzhum District.
Hunger. Livestock mortality.
Osinsky's resolution is correct. Meadows should be fixed firmly for the peasants.

Yekaterinburg Province.
Bashkir lands are not worked. They lie nearby unused.
Can we not begin work on them?

RECORD OF THE CONCLUDING REMARKS OF M. I. KALININ.

Total 550
non-party delegates, one from each province.
(From Kuban-Black Sea Region Pisarenko⁵).
9659

SPEECH BY LENIN*.

A couple of words to that comrade who pointed to the extremely difficult situation in certain districts of Vyatka Province. The districts are included in the famine zone. Now our main hope will be on the agreement that the American government has proposed to us. We will conclude it in the next few days. According to this agreement, the American government is offering 20 million dollars. We will give 10 million, for a total of 30 million dollars — this means 60 million gold rubles. This is a considerable sum. A large part of the spring sowing can be covered, if not completely. Moreover, we are sending [agents] to Canada. We think it will be possible to use an additional part from the gold fund to acquire more seed. The most important question now — this is of course hunger and fodder shortage. It is necessary to complete the spring sowing as thoroughly as possible. To this end all efforts will be directed.

¹ An enormous place in the work of the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets was occupied by questions of agricultural restoration, for, as Lenin wrote, "there is no more pressing question now than the measures capable of raising the productive forces of peasant farming immediately. Only through this can one achieve both an improvement in the situation of workers and a strengthening of the alliance of workers with peasants, a strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat" (vol. XXVI, p. 331). These measures were outlined in the report of the Deputy People's Commissar of Agriculture V. V. Osinsky, "On the Restoration of Agriculture and in particular in the Localities Affected by Famine."

For detailed working through and final editing of the draft resolution submitted by V. V. Osinsky, the Congress created a land commission. Non-party delegates of the Congress were supposed to send their representatives to this commission, according to the proposal [of the Congress], and introduce appropriate amendments and additions. For this purpose, a conference of non-party delegates was convened, which took place after the concluding remarks of V. V. Osinsky on the evening of December 26, 1921. Besides non-party delegates (there were 109 total at the Congress), Lenin and M. I. Kalinin were present at the conference. On the proposal of M. I. Kalinin, who was chairing, the conference elected four delegates to the land commission, then listened to and discussed a report of a representative of the People's Commissariat of Labor on the transport tax and finally proceeded to the purpose of its meeting — discussion of the Land Question.

Lenin, who was present at the conference, carefully recorded all statements and proposals of the non-party delegates and spoke three times at the conference: twice during the discussion of the labor-transport tax question and once at the end of the conference, after discussion on the land question.

* Nesterov — was chairman of the Tver provincial executive committee.
* Gusev — peasant, delegate from Tver Province.
¹ Petruskin — non-party, delegate from Tver Province, former member of the VTsIK, 8th convocation, left for work in the center.

Pisarenko — peasant, delegate to the IX Congress of Soviets from the Kuban-Black Sea Region. Member of the Presidium of the Congress, elected at the conference from non-party delegates.
9667
NOTES ON A MEMORANDUM BY A. S. ENUKIDZE.
[December 26, 1921]

Vladimir Ilyich,

I am sending you the resolutions.
Of them, only one has been finally adopted — on the famine.
The remaining resolutions are being completed today in the commissions.

IX Congress of Soviets. Archive.